LED lighting may generally provide advantages in energy conservation, environmental protection, controllable lighting, solid state lighting, and long operational lifetime. LED lighting devices thus have been widely used in various areas for public, commercial, and indoor lighting.
A Zigbee module is a module with a specification for a suite of high level communication protocols used to create personal area networks built from small, low-power digital radios. A Zigbee module often consumes low power with low cost, and is easy to form a network based on network nodes with simple node configurations. The Zigbee module is therefore suitable for remote controls with a low data transmission rate, including those for lighting switches and remote dimming controls.
A conventional home lighting control system may include a lighting lamp and a remote control to centrally control the lighting. The remote control includes a mobile phone, a home gateway, and a wireless coordinator. The home gateway includes a WiFi module and a Zigbee module. A holder of the lighting lamp includes a Zigbee module. The mobile phone is connected to the WiFi module of the home gateway. The Zigbee module of the home gateway is connected with the wireless coordinator. The wireless coordinator is connected with the Zigbee module of the lighting lamp. Instruction signals from the mobile phone can be transmitted sequentially via: the WiFi module of the home gateway, the Zigbee module of the home gateway, and the wireless coordinator of the remote control; and then arrive at the Zigbee module in the holder of the lighting lamp for lighting controls.
The mobile phone, however, does not include any Zigbee module and therefore cannot use application software to directly control the lighting. In addition, because the Zigbee module does not have any IP address and cannot access a network, the conventional lighting system must have a home gateway for accessing a network such as a LAN or internet. This requires additional components and ultimately increases cost.
Thus, there is a need to overcome these and other problems of the prior art and to provide apparatus, control systems, and configuration methods for LED lighting.